Male Lead: Song Joong Ki
Female Lead: Song Hye Kyo
Also Starring: Jin Goo, Kim Ji Won, Onew, Kim Min Seok, Lee Seung Joon, Hyun Kyu Ni, Lee Yi Kyung, David McInnis, Kang Shin Il, Jo Jae Yoon, Jun Soo Jin, Kim Byung Chul, Seo Jeong Yeon, Jasper Cho, Ji Seung Hyun, Park Hwan Hee, Ahn Bo Hyun, Park Hoon
Year Released: 2016
Number of Episodes: 16
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Romance
Country: Korea
Where I Watched It: Hulu
Recommended By: B Nice
Who I Watched it For: Song Joong Ki

Some relationships are fated, despite the challenges of time and place.

Yoo Shi Jin (Song Joong Ki), the leader of a Special Forces unit, meets trauma surgeon Kang Mo Yeon (Song Hye Kyo) in a hospital emergency room after Shi Jin and his second-in-command, Seo Dae Young (Jin Goo), chase down a thief on their day off.

Shi Jin is immediately smitten with Mo Yeon, and he asks her out on a date. But Shi Jin keeps getting called to duty when he is with Mo Yeon, and the two also realize that they have conflicting views about human life (he will kill to protect his country and she has to save lives at all costs). They decide to break off their budding relationship as a result.

Dae Young also tries to break off his relationship with Army doctor Yoon Myeong Ju (Kim Ji Won) because her father, Lt. General Yoon (Kang Shin Il), thinks Shi Jin is a better match for his daughter.

Shi Jin and Dae Young are then deployed to the fictional war-torn country of Urk on a long-term assignment of helping the United Nations keep peace in the area. After repeatedly being passed over for a promotion because of her lack of connections, Mo Yeon gives up performing surgeries, loosening her principles somewhat to become a celebrity TV doctor and caring for VIP patients at the hospital. But when she refuses the sexual advances of the hospital chairman, Mo Yeon is picked to lead a medical team to staff a clinic in Urk! There, Mo Yeon unexpectedly reconnects with Shi Jin.

“Descendants of the Sun” is a 2016 South Korean drama series directed by Lee Eung Bok. The entire series was pre-produced prior to airing, which is a departure from how Korean dramas are typically produced. The stars and production team spent one month in Greece to film much of the series’ storyline. The drama also is the first project for Song Joong Ki after finishing his mandatory two-year military service.

I watched this show at the recommendation of my friend, B Nice and then I found out that she didn’t even watch it but heard it was good, haha. I still watched it though and though the overall romance was a good one, I struggled with connecting with what was going on and the female lead. I also thought that the male lead was a bit over the top at times but he didn’t annoy me the way that the doctor heroine did.

This show is about two people, who meet and before their romance can take off, the hero does. She’s a doctor and he’s in the military so it’s hard for them to get together because either she’s getting called into surgery or he’s getting called onto missions in faraway places that he can’t even tell her about. So there are some struggles, obviously. They also find out that they have different views on things and then there are more struggles so they call off their budding romance before it grows into anything deeper. They go their separate ways but are brought back together when Mo Yeon is assigned to lead a medical team to run a clinic in Urk, where Shin Jin is stationed. When the two reconnect, sparks fly and the story really picks up.

There’s also a secondary romance between Shin Jin’s buddy Dae Young and an army doctor, Yoon Myeong Ju that is filled with a whole lot of drama. Dae Young’s not the partner that Meyong Ju’s father would have chosen for her and he is very vocal about it. So vocal, in fact, that he consistently abuses his powers at work (he’s one of the higher-ups in the military) to move Dae Young around to make sure that he can’t be with his daughter. Dae Young, of course, doesn’t say any of this to Yoon Myeong Ju, he just goes wherever he’s sent and puts up with the abuse from her father. He kept getting pulled in different directions and his life was thrown upside down at every turn because of his girlfriend so that was some special kind of drama in itself and it drove me just as crazy as the main romance.

I will say that both sets of couples have chemistry in spades. I completely bought everything they were trying to sell and this was my introduction to all of these actors so I was impressed that they can make me feel every single emotion under the sun. I went from happy, to pissed off, to sad, back to happy, back to pissed off, back to sad for all 16 episodes but there was a whole lot of humor from the other characters sprinkled in that my overall experience with this show wasn’t all pissed off.

I’m glad that I watched this show even though it wasn’t my favorite. It introduced me to a bunch of actors I’d like to see in other shows and movies so I’m glad about that. However, this show is made up of a whole lot of stuff that pissed me off that I can’t rate it higher than 3.25 out of 5 stars. I had high hopes that things would turn around but in episode 15, the heroine and the hero were still pissing me off that by then, it was too late for me to absolutely love them. Still, this was a solid drama.

Listen to the OST

Final Rating

3.25 out of 5